


Herding cats and other fruitless endeavors

by wildtrak



Category: The Expendables (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Celebrity, Filming, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-31
Updated: 2019-08-31
Packaged: 2020-10-03 21:09:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20459507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wildtrak/pseuds/wildtrak
Summary: Diamond Eyes is Barney’s forty-seventh film as an actor, and his lucky thirteenth as a director. He’s a naturally superstitious guy anyway, but he’s certain the universe is trying to tell him something on this one. It feels like the production has been cursed from day one. His career redemption hinges on the next few weeks. But between wrangling a drug addicted cinematographer and his own inconvenient romantic notions towards his first assistant director, calling it a train wreck is an understatement.





	Herding cats and other fruitless endeavors

**Author's Note:**

> Just migrating a few old fics from LJ to AO3. This is a WIP, but may continue.

It’s the day that just won’t end. The light streaming in the fancy stained-glass window would suggest it is still mid-afternoon, but it has been set like that for the last eighteen hours, and they are still a few scenes away from the end of the callsheet. The EP has already approved the overtime and Barney tries to shelve the guilt of pushing the budget up against the big red line again, but the location is closed for renovations next week and their schedule is already locked tight elsewhere. There’s not much else he can do. 

There is a lull in the proceedings that allows him to sit in his chair for more than the usual thirty second increments and there is a depressingly simple joy to be found in getting off his feet. He knows it will be short lived, but he's taking the golden opportunity to try and chill the fuck out for a goddamn second.

Lee looks like he would be pulling his hair out, if he had enough length in the strands to grasp. Barney’s long-suffering First AD has settled for flipping his pen around his fingers and aggrievedly checking and rechecking his watch as they wait for another reset. Lee isn’t the kind of First to start yelling when shit hits the fan, but Barney can tell he is extra keyed up and liable to explode at any minute, professionalism be damned. This shoot is definitely testing Lee’s perennial optimism.

Everyone is exhausted, and they are edging closer to the point of no return. 

The prosthetic wound on the side of Barney’s cheekbone is starting to itch, and he can feel the syrupy fake blood starting to crust unpleasantly in his sideburns. He is too disciplined to poke at it, but it takes away from his already scattered concentration. 

Gunner is saying something, muttering about coverage and wanting to get some extra shots, and Barney really should be listening, or contributing in some way. It says “Director” on the back of his chair for a reason, but he’ll be fucked if he can find the energy to care at this juncture. He is fairly confident the whole scene is going to get cut if Paine’s acting doesn’t manage a miraculous Hail Mary improvement in the next twenty minutes. 

Fucking pro-wrestlers. Barney can’t find a way to be charitable about the guy at all.

Gunner’s artistic ramblings are getting more convoluted and he can feel Lee’s blood-pressure shooting up from where he stands, rigid at Barney’s side. The conversation will probably come to nothing anyway, but Gunner always likes to push the envelope. Also, he is annoyingly hard to reason with when he’s got his usual blood volume of illicit substances. 

“You can have three setups. That’s non-fucking-negotiable.” Lee scribbles aggressively in the margins of his scene breakdown and leaves Gunner and Maggie to duke it out over what they can and can’t live without. Barney will worry about vetoing it once they have a consensus, and he’s already given Lee his marching orders anyway.

Barney tunes the ensuing argument between his DOP and Script Supervisor out, and flips through his sides, even though he knows his dialog off by heart. There is an advantage of familiarity when you write the script yourself, but when the heat of the lights are beating down on you and you’re trying desperately not to stare into the black abyss of the camera lens in front of you, the words often fall right out of your head. 

Not to mention the distracting pulse of pain in his right shoulder. That’s getting pretty hard to ignore. Luna isn’t on set today seeing as they’re only shooting dialog, but the reflex to conceal his injury is still working and he manages a deliberate and concentrated fluidity when he knocks back the last of his Red Bull. Three more weeks, then he can go to the hospital. 

Diamond Eyes is Barney’s forty-seventh film as an actor, and his lucky thirteenth as a director. He’s a naturally superstitious guy anyway, but he’s certain the universe is trying to tell him something on this one. It feels like the production has been cursed from day one. 

Paine, despite years of discipline and fight training, has a somewhat bovine grace that manifests at the least helpful moments. 

When Paine trips into the standing candelabra and sets the curtains on fire, Barney just sighs and tries not to cough while the cameras are still rolling. It’s eerily reminiscent of the stories Coppola used to tell about Apocalypse Now, but Barney is under no delusions that there is an Academy Award at the end of this particular yellow brick road. He consoles himself with the fact that at least they’ll have a compelling gag-reel.

Lee’s face cycles through a complicated array of expressions, finally settling on a mixture of agonized acceptance and desperate self-hatred. Exhaustion and delirium finally knocks Barney officially on his ass, and Lee’s expression morphs into that one special face he makes when he is imagining doing unpleasant things to Barney’s person. Barney starts laughing (and possibly crying) uncontrollably, and doesn’t stop even when he feels his eyes go blurry and his lungs seize up. Lee hits him with his clipboard until he realizes he’s getting fake blood on his precious paperwork.

“I quit,” Lee says, for the seventy-sixth time that day.

“You said that yesterday too,” Barney grins, and flings his sides at Lee’s face, before getting off his ass to go be more directorly. Someone has to put the fire out, at least. The rest of the crew are either paralysed by the spectacle or by the 3am apathy and are just watching the chaos with suspiciously blank expressions.

“All right people, excitement's over. Back to firsts please!” Lee does yell this time, and gives Barney a vindicated smirk when Paine asks another inane question about his character’s motivation. Barney just pats him on one unnaturally meaty shoulder with a “you’re doing great!” and stomps back to the monitors. He listens for the ready calls from sound and camera, and flips his headphones back up over his ears. 

“I have a good feeling about this one,” Barney whispers to Lee when he returns to his post at Barney’s side.

“You said that about the last ten takes,” Lee replies skeptically, and girds himself visibly for another trainwreck performance.

“Well, it’s not like it can get any worse,” Barney counters, and then hates himself immediately for putting that out in the universe.

“Alpha Ninety-two Foxtrot, take eighteen.” 

“Mark it!”

“And, Action!”

Paine misses his mark again. 

.~.~.~.

The unfortunate truth of it is that Barney has a bulletproof competence kink, and Lee being competent in his face, all day, every day is wearing on his composure. Competence isn’t the only thing about Lee that gets him in a state to scandalize the wardrobe department, but it’s definitely top five. Along with Lee’s smile, his accent, his intelligence and the acres of muscle hidden under unassuming baggy shirts. It’s a problem, is what he’s saying. A Lee-shaped problem that is getting depressingly obvious to the rest of the crew. He’s pretty sure it's the motivation for the pitying looks Maggie keeps giving him, at the very least.

.~.~.~.

“Evian! I see Evian!” Maggie shouts over the frantic shuffling of crew and equipment that precedes every shot in the cramped conditions. Lee wades into the melee, dodging around Barney and vaulting over a log to pluck the plastic container from the fork of the tree Yin’s suspended, upside down, from.

“And the ‘Water Bottle on a Hot Set’ Award for Achievement in Incongruous Set Dressing goes to…” Lee squints at the barely legible marker scratchings on the side of the label, and sighs gustily. “Thorn! Again!”

“I’ll paint it out it in post!” The distant reply is distracted. Lee takes aim at the shaved head buried in a Macbook at the edge of the clearing, and throws the bottle with deadly accuracy and more than a little excessive force. It bounces off Thorn’s forehead with a satisfying crunch. 

“Thorn…” Barney says warningly, turning around to stare at the VFX artist with a disappointed frown.

“Geez, I’m sorry ok. Put it on my tab.”

“Hear that people? Thorn will be bringing more beer. And maybe one day it will fucking sink in that you do not leave your bloody water bottles on my set. Now, let’s shoot this fucking thing before Yin’s head explodes!” Lee marches back to the monitors with little concern for anyone in his path. Mars has to roll half under the crane rig to avoid getting stomped on.

“I want more money!” Yin’s voice is pitiful.

“And, action!” Barney shouts over the top of him. 

Vilain has a very avant garde approach to the acting process. He and Barney do not get on at all, having been career rivals for years, but Barney has been trying to bury the hatchet on this one. 

He bursts into the scene with impressive grace, but Barney can’t get over how short the guy really is. He just hopes that the camera angles can disguise it. Vilain starts talking, and Barney sinks down into his seat, trying to ignore the frantic scribbles Maggie is making all over her script. 

The french accent makes the guy’s meandering approach to dialog even worse, and if he doesn’t get to the important line soon, Barney is going to have to cut about ten takes together. It won’t exactly go well with the style of the rest of the film, but at this point he’s getting desperate.

“And then, I said to him... I said…” Vilain trails off, looking lost. Barney holds Maggie back before she can shout the correct line. He’s not above making Vilain suffer, but he’s also not sure the guy gives a fuck anyway.

“...I said, I’m gonna go to your kid’s school and pay her a special visit!” The menacing effect is lost completely by the fact that Vilain looks surprised that he remembered the line. He’s also holding the knife in the wrong hand again. Barney sighs.

“All right, cut! Get Yin out of the damned tree. Lee, call lunch.” Barney drops his headset on his directors chair and makes a hasty exit through the underbrush, ignoring Vilain’s attempts to get his attention. He doesn’t want another three hour lecture on why he’s a terrible director who doesn’t understand the artistic process. He’s not the one who got his lead actor killed in a stunt gone wrong. Vilain doesn’t have a leg to stand on as far as Barney is concerned, and should be grateful he’s got a job and isn’t in jail. 

He feels bad leaving Lee to supervise the ravening hordes, but he’s pretty sure he saw blueberry cheesecake at the craft table so he’s not about to let that opportunity slip away.


End file.
